‘Kahay Dil Jidhar’ Box Office: Suffers at the Hands of Exhibitors

Mansha Pasha and Junaid Khan starrer ‘Kahay Dil Jidhar’ was released in cinemas last Friday along with the much awaited Hollywood flick ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’. The film was expected to benefit from the overflow of ‘Spider-Man’ but that couldn’t happen. Within the two days the film’s shows were cancelled from some major multiplexes and were allocated to ‘Spider-Man’ instead.

The exhibitors usually do not cancel the show if atleast 10 tickets of the show are sold. So the question is that, did the film really performed so bad that it could not meet the criteria of ’10-people-rule’? The answer is ‘NO’. Trade analyst Ali Zain reveals in a video for EPK that the film’s shows were cancelled despite the fact that more than 10 tickets were sold and the cinema staff was guiding the cine-goers to not purchase the tickets of the film and to rather go for ‘Spider-Man’.

The question again rises that why exhibitors did this? The answer is, ‘GREED’. The exhibitors had suffered huge losses for a long period of one and a half years due to Covid-19. And now when they got the opportunity where they could sell houseful shows for ‘Spider-Man’, they greedily seized it at the expense of damaging a local film.

Trade Analyst Ali Zain rightly points out the fact that Hollywood is not an all-season saviour for Pakistani cinemas. There are barely two or three Hollywood films that perform good at Pakistani box office each year. The cinema business largely depends on the local films. In such a case, it is a very short-sighted act by exhibitors to butcher a local film just for a temporary benefit.

Ali further says that, “I am disappointed by the industry and Producers Association as no one from the fraternity came up to condemn this.” We, at PakistaniCinema.net, condemn the  act of exhibitors and urge them to give the film it’s fare share of shows on coming weekend to make up for what they have done. And to make sure to not repeat such an act again.